


I Am Blue, I Love You

by junjunkii



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Artificial Intelligence, Competition, Family, Friendship, Gen, Idols, Love, Miku will probably be gay for someone in the future we'll see where this fic goes!!, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, ROBOT IDOLS AYYY, Relationships to be added - Freeform, Robots, miku is a robot and the engineer who built her is her mother figure you CANNOT stop me, more vocaloids will be created in future chapters too -w-)b
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-18 12:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junjunkii/pseuds/junjunkii
Summary: On test six hundred-thirty-one the girl opens her mouth and says “Hello.”On test seven hundred-one, the first sound of the future is fully operational.And asks questions.Constantly.Hatsune Miku is the first of her kind, a fully artificial life form, and she's nothing like her creator ever thought she'd be. Miku might someday be a world-famous idol and a miracle of engineering, but before she discovers what fame is like, she's going to discover family, friendship, and love....whether her engineer wanted that or not.





	1. She

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a whole new AO3 to start over and write fics with a fresh audience. So while this is by far not my first fic, it's my first one on this account, and I'm really excited to see where it goes!  
> Thank you so much to anyone who reads -w-) Kudos and comments are also very appreciated.  
> And of course, I hope you enjoy!

Blue. Blue. Blue in the veins. Blue in the brain.

It pulses and leaves traces of itself behind, like the burning of lightning on the retinas, over every inch of skin.

Blue. Blue. Blue like the error screens flashing their hue against the open throat.

The engineer sighs. It’s not the first time the program has failed, and it won’t be the last. Creating an animatronic is one thing- artificial life entirely another. One time the girl’s eyes opened, and looked at her. Just once. That was four hundred and seven tests ago. She wonders if this project is really no use, after all, just like everyone else says.

But she picks up her tools and readjusts the voice box, and tries again. Step by step. Test by test.

Blue by blue by blue.

 

On test six hundred-thirty-one the girl opens her mouth and says “Hello.”

The engineer is so astounded she cannot answer until she clears the shock from her throat and whispers back, cautiously, “Hello?”

The girl is silent for a long time, then, slowly, robotically, testing out having a voice for the first time, she says “Hello world.”

The engineer is so joyful she cries out and dances wildly about the room. She nearly trips and cracks her head open over stray wires snaking about the floor.

The girl mechanically turns her head to the scuffle and seems to be lost in thought. Then her eyes open wide.

The brightest blue shines from them.

“Are you there?”

The engineer scrambles over to the table her creation is sitting upright on, looking up at her reverently. “I am here.”

“Did you make me?”

Breathlessly, “I did.”

The girl cautiously raises an arm, and stretches her fingers. She looks at her perfectly painted nails. “You did a good job.”

The engineer shakes in her shoes. “Thank you, Miku.”

“Miku!” There is something like delight in the artificial voice. “Is that me?”

“Y-yes. Yes!” A grin splits the engineer’s face. “You are Hatsune Miku, the first sound of the future.”

The girl- Miku- wiggles her fingers. “Hatsune...”

An inquisitive gaze. “Is your hand quite alright?”

“I’ve never had one before.”

“You have two, you know.”

Miku goes completely still, then slowly looks to her left. Her eyes flash in awe. “Another!”

The engineer just laughs.

 

Miku runs for a full thirty-two hours before there is another failure in her program. But the engineer has new fire- her project _works_ , and there’s no denying it now. Miku shows clear knowledge of body parts, but a clear surprise to owning them accompanies that. This artificial life, it’s _working_.

The engineer works tirelessly for two more days, and on test seven hundred-one, the first sound of the future is fully operational.

And asks questions.

_Constantly._

“Do I need to eat?”

“No, Miku, your body runs on electricity, not food.”

“So do I eat electricity?”

“If that’s how you want to think about it.”

“Can I really think?”

“You’re a bit self-aware for a newborn.”

“You gave me the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl, not a newborn.”

“Fair enough.”

 

The engineer presents Hatsune Miku at the biggest robotics conference in the country, to an awed panel of judges. She is nothing more than a metal-plated body, long and lean, with brilliant blue eyes and painted nails. Yet she is plastered all over headlines for months to come.

The engineer hides Miku away in her lab, to keep her creation away from the press, and goes out to interviews herself.

“I am lonely when you are away,” Miku states one day, matter-of-factly.

The engineer looks up from her computer, surprised. “You feel loneliness?”

“Human children are lonely when their mother is away. Should I not feel the same?”

A blink. Another. “Do you think of me as your mother?”

“Didn’t you birth me?”

The clicking of keys, a pause. “I suppose, if you want to think of it that way.”

“I do.” Miku admires her nails again, and says nothing more.

 

A week later, after a long day of conference, the engineer returns home to find Miku intently watching the television in the living room. She nearly jumps out of her skin.

“How did you- why- Miku!”

Miku turns her head- guiltily?- toward her. “I memorized the key code to the lab door…”

The engineer sighs. Well. This was bound to happen at some point or another. Artificial life will come with artificial craftiness. She takes a seat next to her creation. “What have you found on the TV, Miku?”

Miku just points to the screen, eyes glued to it once more. An idol group simpers to the camera, flouncing about an overly decorated set and singing a peppy, high-pitched pop song.

“You like that?”

“I love it,” Miku says, very seriously.

The engineer is a bit taken aback. “You’ve never loved something before.”

“Huh?” Miku tears her gaze away from the television. “What do you mean? I love _you._ ”

The engineer feels a lump travel up her throat. She coughs it away and awkwardly pats Miku’s shiny metal head. “I… I love you too, Miku.”

Miku seems content with that, and gives her full attention to the idols once more.

The engineer does not sleep for a long while that night.

 

“I want to look like a real human.”

The engineer gapes up at Miku. She is standing at full height on the kitchen counter and looks extremely upset.

“Why are you- can you get down please?”

“Only if you promise to make me look like a human!”

“You do look like a human!” the engineer cries. “I spent _countless_ nights making sure of that exact fact!”

“I don’t have skin!” Miku wails.

“You have… you have metal skin!” the engineer says rather lamely.

Miku stamps her foot. It reverberates around the kitchen. If she could produce tears, there would be fountains.

“Okay, okay.” The engineer holds up her hands, defeated. “I’ll… I’ll get you skin.”

“I want hair too,” Miku pouts.

“And hair.”

“Make it really long.”

“As you wish.”

“And give me clothes because when I have skin, I’ll be naked, and that’s illegal.”

“It’s, uh. Not quite illegal to be naked. But I will make you clothes. Can you get off the counter now?”

Miku obediently hops down, immediately shuffling back to the couch to watch television. She makes herself comfortable on the cushions, despite not necessarily needing comfort. The engineer observes for a while, marveling at how far her creation has come. Miku has wants now, and a bit of a temper. She also has an addiction to idol shows.

The engineer makes herself a cup of coffee, and swirls it around the mug, contemplating.

Then she downs the cup and goes to bed.

 

Despite Miku’s impatience, it still takes nearly a year of hard work to build and modify her skin and a sort of mechanical nervous system. The first time Miku experiences the cold she announces she absolutely hates it, and insists on wearing a quilt everywhere around the house. The engineer exasperatedly tries to get Miku to wear a sweater but she refuses.

“It’s my body and my choice!” Miku’s autonomy has only grown.

“I feel you should be choosing public decency at this point.”

“I’m not in public!”

“Don’t be such a smartass.”

“My brain is in my head, not my ass.”

“Miku!”

“You said ass first!”

“I’m an adult, I’m allowed.”

“I’m only eleven months old. I’m a baby, I don’t know any better.”

“ _Miku-_ ”

 

The hair is much easier to accomplish, as it’s simply a wig. Miku herself picks it out, a long, draping mess of a thing. But she loves it because it's blue.

So the engineer learns how to restore wigs for the first time, and Miku spends a whole week in turn learning how to braid. Satisfied with her appearance, Miku takes to wearing clothes. _Finally._ The engineer cannot find words to express how grateful she is to not come home to a bald, smoothly naked girl hunched on the couch anymore.

Now that Miku doesn’t feel so self-conscious, she begins expressing a growing need to go outside, to meet people. It makes the engineer nervous. The outside world is dangerous, and messy, and full of terrible people. She realizes she does think of Miku as her baby.

But Miku isn’t a baby. Miku is Miku.

“I want to go outside.”

“Can’t you wait a little longer?” the engineer pleads.

“For what?”

She is silent, worrying at her bottom lip.

“I don’t want to stay inside and watch TV all the time. That’s no life for me.”

“The real world isn’t like TV, though. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that!” But there’s something off in her voice. “That’s why I want to go out. I want to see it for myself.”

The engineer sighs softly and leans back against the wall, mulling it over. “Fine,” she says. “But only if I go with you.”

Miku beams.

 

For her one-year birthday, the engineer takes Miku outside to go shopping for new clothes.

Miku is fascinated by everything, eyes flashing with pure joy as she takes in the world. A pigeon flies overhead and Miku stops to gape at it in awe. She gets a lot of strange looks in the street, some recognizing who they are, and the engineer hurries her along to the store as quickly as she can.

Miku spends hours just touching fabrics. Sequins she finds especially interesting, and traces over each tiny shape with her fingertip. But mostly she likes shiny fabrics, and they leave the store with bags full of metallic clothes. Miku likes blue and black the most. The engineer gently brushes her own black hair that night and admires it for the first time in years.

The next day, Miku dances about the living room in swooshy clothes, flapping her arms and kicking her legs out, reveling in the feeling of the smooth fabric on her artificial skin.

The engineer watches her move and bounces her heel on the linoleum of the kitchen floor.

“These clothes are great, Mom!” Miku cheers.

The engineer freezes. Her breath catches in her throat. She stares at the girl in her living room, the girl she made with her own two hands. The girl she put more work into than anything else in her entire life.

 _Mom_.

Something has a tight hold on her heart and it won’t let go.

“I’m glad you like them, Miku,” she manages to choke out, ducking her head to hide her trembling lip. Miku doesn’t notice.

Miku dances and dances and dances, flashes of blue twinkling around the room.

Blue. Blue. Blue in her hair. Blue in her stare.

It pulses and leaves traces of itself behind, like the flashing of lightning in the sky, over every surface.

Blue.

Blue.

Blue is simply Miku now.

“Mom?”

The engineer nearly sobs. “Y-yes?”

Miku rests her chin in her hands, leaning her elbows on the back of the couch. “Will you teach me to sing?”

She is so beautiful.

“Of course, Miku.”

 

Blue is only the beginning.

 


	2. Was

The engineer storms in through the door, slamming it behind her and cursing under her breath. Her hair is falling out of its bun about her wild face. Everything about her screams anger.

“Mom?” Miku peeks cautiously from the stairs. She had gotten her own room upstairs, no more resting at night alone in the lab. “Is everything okay?”

“Perfect,” Engineer-Mom hisses.

Miku shrinks a little and slinks back upstairs.

Mom watches her go and sighs heavily, slumping against the kitchen wall. How could she explain what had happened in a way Miku would understand? How should she even begin? She observes listlessly as dust motes settle on her boots, dancing sluggishly in the low light from the kitchen window.

Most of all, how could she explain to Miku that it isn’t something to be excited about?

 

Miku watches Mom eat dinner with an almost forlorn expression. Longing. As if she wants to taste the cup noodles herself on her rubber-plastic tongue. They’re salty and lukewarm, and Mom doesn’t understand how anyone could want these so much.

She doesn’t understand, either, how things could have come to this.

“Miku?”

“Yes Mom?” She perks up so quickly.

“Something’s… happened.”

Miku watches the languid steam rising from the paper cup. “I figured that out.”

“Someone’s making more- ah- people like you.” Mom winces at the choice of words. She never quite knows what to call Miku.

On the contrary, Miku practically lights up. “More of me?”

“Twins,” Mom sighs softly.

Miku gasps and grins wide, but the smile begins to slip as Mom just stares into her noodles. “Aren’t you excited, Mom?”

“I’m not,” she says quietly.

Miku pauses, fidgets a bit awkwardly. “Why not?”

“Because they’re  _ my  _ plans!” Mom finally snaps, standing up so fast her chair tips and clatters to the floor behind her. Miku watches. Scared. “And I have no idea how they got into their hands. But I should have known… that weasel bitch…” She hisses more expletives under her breath, chucking the half-full cup noodles into the sink, and stands over it, breathing and leaning heavily. “If the twins are successful, then that means you’ll have competition. And competition means more press, and more reporters, and more pressure for you to be… to be a robot. And not a human being.”

Miku is quiet for a long time, playing distractedly with her long blue hair. “But I’m not a human being, Mom. Wasn’t that the purpose?”

Mom turns, just looking at her. Her creation, her daughter. Her Miku. The most beautiful and precious person to her. Then she turns away away. Lost.

Scared.

“I’m not so sure anymore.”

A pause, the soft sound of feet on linoleum, then two arms circle Mom’s waist, and an artificial face rests over her shoulder. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Miku says softly. “Maybe this is my chance to find my purpose.”

Mom rests her hands over Miku’s. “Maybe.” They’re warm. She feels alive.

They stay like that for a long time.

 

Mom and Miku spend the next few weeks avoiding the news, and filling up their free time with singing instead. Mom is a terrible singer, but luckily, Miku can just be programmed to be better. Mom spends many sleepless nights poring over her computer, adjusting and re-adjusting until each pitch is perfect.

Their little home becomes full of song, with Miku writing many of her own. They are unsurprisingly shallow for a robot girl who hardly ever leaves the house, and whose biggest influences are TV idols.

Mom writes some songs too, and Miku struggles to sing them in the style Mom wants her to. Enka is very hard, even for a perfect robot. A few more adjustments, though, and Miku is warbling away in her dulcet tones. Every update to her voicebox takes away more and more of the robotic grate to it, and soon, Mom can’t tell the difference between Miku’s speech and any other human’s.

Miku sings her to sleep some nights, soft crooning lullabies in the lowest notes of her range. Mom doesn’t dream those nights, just sleeps. Blissful.

But real life can’t be avoided forever.

 

“Listen,” Mom is saying, hushed and angry, into her cell phone. Miku is on sleep mode in the lab, waiting for the replacement of a faulty tendon, while Mom takes the unexpected call in the living room upstairs. “I am not putting Miku on  _ display. _ ”

“Miku is a robot, Hatsune.”

“And she belongs to  _ me _ ,” Mom hisses. “I get to say what happens to her and what doesn’t.”

“You’d really suppress this kind of technology from the world! Think of the uses for her, and others like her. She could help millions!”

“She’s just a girl!”

“She is a  _ machine _ . Your grief has made you senile. Miku is not a replacement for your daughter, and the sooner you realize that the better.”

Mom breathes hard into the receiver, seething. “I’ll listen to you when you stop stealing my inventions, you backstabbing  _ thief _ .”

“I’m just improving on them. You’re a sad excuse for an engineer, you know? Call me back when you’ve rethought the demonstration.”

The call buzzes into silence.

Mom throws her phone so hard against the floor the screen shatters.

 

“You seem tense,” Miku says softly when she is powered back on. She kicks her leg, testing it out again. It moves perfectly.

Mom sighs heavily and leans her head on her hand, mussing up her bangs. “I’m getting a lot of pressure lately.”

“About what?”

She smiles wryly. “Putting you on display.”

Miku cocks her head. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“It’s not what I want for you.” Mom idly organizes her screwdriver sleeve, rolling it up again with her long fingers. “I want you to have a normal life, here with me.”

Miku plays with the discarded end of a cut wire, feeling the way the end of it pokes at her fingertip sensors. It pricks. It really is a miracle, being a living robot. “I’m not really normal, Mom,” she says, very quietly. “We both know that. Maybe it’s not for the best that you keep acting that way.”

Mom looks up at her, hurt. “What do you mean?”

Miku lets the wire fall. “I don’t think someone like me is meant to lead a normal life.”

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“No!” Miku exclaims, and Mom startles, a shocked expression spreading across her face like ink spilled on cloth. “No, it’s not!”

“But-”

“You never asked  _ me, _ Mom.” Miku is feeling anger. She never has before, and she doesn’t like it at all, but she can’t do a thing to stop it. It feels like her circuits are on fire. “I want to show the world who I am! I want to show the world Hatsune Miku!”

Mom stares at her, hands shaking. Her voice shakes, too, when she finally finds it. “And who is Hatsune Miku?”

Miku stands tall. The fluorescent light of the lab illuminates her eyes and hair, her manmade skin, the metallic clothes she adores so much. She glows an electric blue, artificially wild. “Hatsune Miku is the first sound of the future,” she declares. Her voice is clear and strong.

Perfect.

“And my purpose is to be an idol!”

 

* * *

 

“The twins are coming along nicely.”

“They are, aren’t they!”

“Have you seen Hatsune’s latest stunt?”

“Oh, how could I not? It’s been all over the news. An idol, really… to think Hatsune is going into the entertainment business is amusing at the very least.”

“Do your plans for the twins change at all?”

“Of course they do. As if I would let my dear old rival take the stage so easily! What’s an up-and-coming idol without some healthy competition, after all?”

“But how will you set yourself apart from Hatsune? You don’t want to come off as a copycat, after all.”

“Hmm… that still remains to be seen! But this vocal technology… I’m pleased. Everything is progressing perfectly.”

“And the names? Have they been chosen yet?”

A sly smile, a sweeping hand. The two bodies are on proud display in the middle of the sprawling lab, wires snaking between their fingers and toes. Their eyes remain closed. For now.

“May I introduce you to Kagamine Rin and Len?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c
> 
> twitter @junjunkiii


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